


Ringtail

by Yeah_JSmith



Category: Sly Cooper (Video Games)
Genre: Comedy, Gen, and Carm is 19, and sad, and she is angry, pre-Sly 1, so they're like 16, this is before Carm was on their case, underage Sly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 18:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12514084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_JSmith/pseuds/Yeah_JSmith
Summary: Sly Cooper doesn’t have to be a criminal. Carmelita Fox would like to convince him, but first she has to catch him.Or, the reason Carm is so mad at Sly all the time in Thievius Raccoonus.





	Ringtail

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't take this seriously. I didn't take this seriously. I'm incapable of taking anything seriously.

It’s that raccoon again, the annoying one who seems to be trying to build up a reputation. He calls himself Slick or something – whatever it is, Carmelita  _ knows  _ it can’t be a real name – and he doesn’t seem to be hiding the fact that he’s a thief, unlike her usual suspects. He even wears a  _ bandit mask,  _ which honestly seems ridiculous because if it weren’t for the ribbons flowing behind him in the breeze, nobody would be able to tell he’s wearing one.

Some part of her notes that those ribbons could be used to detain him temporarily. Another part notes that she should probably pin her hair to her head, because the same argument could be used for her loose ponytail. He cuts a striking figure against the Paris skyline, perching on a shelf-like ledge. Who even builds these houses? Modern-day Paris is like a playground for sneak thieves.

Technically, Carmelita has been ordered to help the locals investigate the theft of an original Munch from the Louvre, suspected to have been stolen by a serial offender who is  _ probably  _ a fox and  _ probably  _ a woman and  _ probably  _ goes by the name of Parker, though all of those are just rumors. This is a step up from her last assignment, finding the Kokiri Emerald in Japan, which lasted all of five minutes because local authorities had picked up the culprit before Carmelita even  _ arrived.  _ Still, she’s got a moment to perhaps not detain the man, but at least deter him. There’s no proof that he’s ever stolen anything, after all, despite her brief case notes from the last time they ran into each other. There’s no record of that incident at all, actually, which makes her suspect he’s either a hacker or working with one.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the most beautiful constable with INTERPOL,” says the man in English, straightening. She fingers her tranquilizer gun, but he’s not acting threatening. The more seasoned officers get shock pistols, and she  _ aches  _ to get her hands on one of those, but until then, she’s stuck with an inefficient gun and a taser.

“It’s Inspector now, actually,” she replies. Her English is far more accented than his, which implies that he’s been speaking it for longer. It might even be his first language, though his French is elegant enough that it could go either way. (Carmelita doesn’t tend to let on that she can understand French just fine, because it makes eavesdropping that much easier.) Reluctantly, she adds, “Thanks to you.”

“Oh, I have no idea what you mean.” His tone is light and sarcastic, the annoying kind that gets under her skin. The kind of sarcasm that means  _ I know you know I’m lying, and it’s hilarious.  _ “I’ve never been anywhere near you in any of your prior cases. I only know you from your reputation.”

When the raccoon steps forward, she doesn’t draw her weapon, but she does snarl a little before saying, “Stop right there…uh…Ringtail.”

Maybe he’ll find it offensive. She hopes so. She finds his continued freedom offensive. Unfortunately, it makes him smile – well, smirk, really, his teeth aren’t out enough to call it a smile – and tell her, lifting his hands into the air, “It warms my heart to know you’ve given me a nickname, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate to be so informal before we get to know each other. If you give me your number, I’d be happy to call you and set up a date. A night on the town, perhaps? Good food, good wine, and a dance or two?”

Well, all right. In theory, that sounds divine. It’s been ages since she relaxed, and the man is more handsome than she’ll ever admit aloud, and Carmelita loves to dance. But despite the lack of evidence she knows exists, Slick (or whatever his stupid alias is)  _ is  _ a thief. He moves like he’s been doing it all his life, so he probably has a long history of sneaking around stealing things. In fact, taking all of that into consideration, she has to assume he’s in his late twenties. He’s probably too old for her, even if he  _ weren’t  _ a dirty rotten criminal.

Still, a little casual flirting might make him more amenable to…sharing details that will make him easier to track down. “I could stand to wind down and relax.”

“Really?” Did…did his voice just crack? He clears his throat and pretends it didn’t happen. “I still need your number, Inspector Fox, or we’ll have to keep meeting like this. Under cover of night on Parisian rooftops. People might  _ talk.” _

She steps forward to run her fingers over his chest. He’s wearing layers, a yellow turtleneck under his blue shirt, but she can imagine what it might be like to feel his actual fur. Not that she’s going to seriously think about that while on the job. So  _ what  _ if she maybe has a thing for graceful men. So  _ what  _ if he’s stupid attractive. So  _ what  _ if his surprise was the most adorable thing she’s ever seen. This is just information gathering, and if that little shudder of his is real, that’s not her problem. “So let them talk, Ringtail. What’s the harm, if there’s nothing to talk about?”

He matches her, closing the gap of mere centimeters between them, but doesn’t touch her with his hands. Surprising; he seems like the type who’ll just take what he wants. Maybe he’s just not that kind of criminal. That’s a relief. She can feel his breath on her neck when he murmurs, “But maybe there  _ could  _ be.”

“You’d have to give me something valuable to make it worth my while,” she murmurs back, forcing the vague shame into the little corner of her mind reserved for Things To Deal With Later. Her hand clenches his shirt as she pulls him in so that they’re nose to nose. Though he’s taller than she is, he doesn’t tower over her, and she can see his pupils widen, feel his breath get shallow. His hands hover, but again, he doesn’t touch. Too bad jewel thievery is illegal. She’d like to test the strength of his restraint. “Some information, perhaps.”

“I-information,” he echoes, looking at her like she is everything. It’s nice to be admired. It’s nice to be wanted. Too bad it can’t go anywhere.

“Yes. Maybe...about what you  _ were  _ doing the night I was promoted to Inspector. After all, you weren’t there. It must have been something mundane.”

“I.” He swallows heavily, and then his brain apparently catches up to the rest of him because he steps back, slowly, clearly trying to meld into the shadows of the nearby chimney. “That was totally not cool, Inspector.”

It’s dark, so Carmelita chooses to interpret the downturn of his lips as a disappointed frown rather than the pout it’s dangerously close to becoming. It could be either, and she’d rather not deal with a man-child. “Well, breaking the law isn’t  _ cool _ either. Don’t try anything. I’m searching for the thief who stole the Munch from the Louvre last night, and I don’t want to have to deal with you, too.”

“You shouldn’t waste your time with that,” he tells her, seemingly regaining his composure. He settles into a slouch as his hand touches something she didn’t notice before leaning against the chimney, and she’s on alert again, but everyone says not to shoot unless you know the threat level. 

She lifts her chin. “Oh? And why not?”

“It’s a fake. A good one, but a fake. The original was stolen years ago. If this one was stolen by who I think, she’ll know that as soon as she sees the back of it. In fact, she probably ditched it already.” He grins at her, charming once again.  _ Too bad, too bad. _ “You might find the painting, but you won’t find Parker.”

Before she can ask how he knows Parker, and how he knows it’s a fake, he drags the object out of the shadows and  _ jumps off the roof.  _ Her heart leaps into her throat before she sees him hook onto a line with the crook of the object she now recognizes: a gold-tipped cane. She first saw that cane in crime scene photos at the academy, and if this man is related to the slaughtered family, she now knows his name.

“Cooper,” she growls, and faintly, she hears him whoop with glee.

* * *

Puerto Rico is nice, she decides. It’s hot and beautiful, and she’s surrounded by her native language, though some of the castellano snobs look down on her distinctly mexicano accent. She’s used to being spoken down to, though, if not because she’s young, then because she’s a woman doing a man’s job, or because she’s brash, or because she’s not feminine enough, or because she’s  _ too  _ feminine, or because she’s too tough or not tough enough, or...well. They all respect her eventually, or she grinds them into dust.

Metaphorically. With grace and wit, obviously. Never with physical force, because that would be  _ wrong. _

She’s only in town for a few days to help the local police after an international thief ransacked an entire town and, ridiculously, stole all the left shoes out of everyone’s house. It would be funny, if the thief hadn’t also stolen precious jewelry and left a couple of dead bodies in their path. INTERPOL was alerted to the signature of someone calling themselves “the Rogue,” which,  _ why is everyone so dumb,  _ and anyway, an island is a good place to catch a criminal because it’s easy to keep an eye on the comings and goings of flagged passports and generally shady individuals.

She is entirely unprepared to see the raccoon again, crouching in the brush, almost completely still except for his swaying tail. Cooper. She’s started a paper case file on him, adding what she remembers about their prior run-ins to clippings from newspapers about the family and photos she managed to track down. Paper, thankfully, is safe from hackers. If this Cooper is as good as his brother – or cousin, or however they’re related – then he probably knows how to crack a safe, but he’d have to guess she had a file in the first place, and then guess where she keeps it, and finally get past INTERPOL security. It’s safe for now, especially since the file is just an idle project to keep her occupied during her downtime.

“I’m listening,” he says dryly to nobody, looking through a pair of high-tech-looking binoculars. He must have an earbud in his ear, which means she was right: he’s working with a team. 

_ Please,  _ she thinks.  _ Don’t be the Rogue. You’re better than that. _

The thought comes out of nowhere. She doesn’t know this guy. The only conversations they’ve had were brief by necessity, but she can’t help remembering the way he saved her from getting fired in the opera house in Paris, the way he didn’t touch her on the rooftop. He’s a criminal, and he deserves to go to prison for his (probably too numerous to count) crimes, but the Rogue is a killer as well as a thief. If Cooper  _ is  _ the Rogue, then she flirted with a killer. She let a killer go free. 

He hasn’t noticed her. She listens.

“I know he’s dangerous, I’ve seen his stats. The last thing I want to do is go head to head with a monster like the Rogue. I just, you know, want to clean out his gallery. I heard he stole that sweet golden violin in Shanghai, and I want it. Ooh, and I’m definitely taking all of his right shoes. I feel he deserves more poetic justice before the police nab him.” 

She can’t help but grin at the image, despite her dislike for the raccoon with his back to her. Criminals really shouldn’t be funny. Or attractive. Or free. But a lead is a lead, and she’s not stupid enough to make the job harder on herself, so she won’t arrest him  _ yet.  _ If he knows where the Rogue is hiding, all she has to do is follow him and arrest them both.

Cooper is still talking. “Relax, Bentley, we’ve been doing this since we were nine. That’s like...eight whole years.”

Carmelita almost swallows her tongue. She puts her hand over her mouth so she doesn’t make a noise, when really all she wants to do is shout obscene words into the sky. She closes her eyes in despair when he adds, “Fine, seven years. I’m only a couple of months younger than you guys. You don’t have to rub it in.”

Sixteen. Cooper is  _ sixteen.  _ He’s not a man, he’s a boy. A  _ child.  _ And to think, back in Paris...the  _ thoughts  _ she was having...she feels the powerful need for a screwdriver to the face. Either a real one or one with plenty of vodka in it. 

(The cop part of her makes a mental note to add the name “Bentley” to Cooper’s paper file. It also notes that this is probably Conner Cooper’s  _ son,  _ not his brother, which means she has another lead to follow once she returns to Paris. Most of her is just gagging internally at the thought of how close she was to kissing a  _ kid.) _

“I’m not worried.  _ La policía  _ don’t even know we’re here. In and out, easy as taking candy from a baby.” Clearly he’s never met a baby, because that’s exponentially harder than burgling a known violent thief. “I’m going to get moving. You guys keep the van running; I won’t be long.”

His friends will have to keep their van running indefinitely, because Cooper most certainly  _ will  _ be long. Because he’ll be going to...well, no. He’s underage. What is the juvenile equivalent of prison? What kind of idiot kid decides to be an international thief? The spawn of a much less scrupulous international thief, she supposes. Conner and Amélie Cooper got what was coming to them in the end.

She...doesn’t want that to happen to this ringtail, though. He may be a thief, but he’s also a child who probably doesn’t quite understand the consequences of following in his parents’ footsteps. He moves like he’s been doing it all his life  _ because he has.  _ Because his asshole parents determined what he would be before he was ever conceived. Amélie Moreau, before she married and subsequently disappeared, was a con artist who used her beauty and charm to trick her marks into paying her millions of dollars for fake causes and investments. Conner Cooper was a sneak thief, the best in the world, who had no problem leaving collateral damage if it meant leaving with the loot. The poor kid never had a chance. 

But, Carmelita decides, he  _ does. _ He does if she gives him one. He’s still a minor. He can change, and by the time he’s an adult, he can be a contributing member of society. Like a...well, the only professions she can think of for a man with his skillset are circus performer and bounty hunter, but at least they’re legitimate jobs.

(She won’t think about how good he’d look in a uniform with a badge just like hers.  _ He is a child. _

And this isn’t at all about assuaging her guilty conscience, either.)

Ringtail – she’s not going to call him Slick Cooper, that’s too ridiculous – is off like a shot and she follows on silent, steady feet. She has a murderer to catch and a juvenile delinquent to rehabilitate.

* * *

It’s worse than she thought. The kid isn’t calling himself Slick. Conner and Amélie Cooper named their son  _ Sly. _ On  _ purpose. _ Carmelita is kind of embarrassed to say his name aloud, so for the foreseeable future, he’s going to be called Ringtail, protocol be damned.

Madeleine, the old goat from Happy Camper Orphanage (and God, can you  _ get  _ any more cliché?), is all too happy to fill in the gaps. 

“Oh, yes,  _ Sly,”  _ the matron says snidely. “Little troublemaker. Thomas and Murray were so sweet when they were young, and then that  _ raccoon  _ came. A bad influence. Had them stealing sweets and trinkets from the staff within six months.”

Carmelita pretends to be surprised that the children in her care might steal things. Her experience with orphanages makes her think that it’s far more likely Ringtail’s friends were simply unsuccessful until they got help from someone who knew what he was doing. “So he had accomplices even at that age?”

“If Sly is alive, they’re probably still together. They all three disappeared when they were...oh, fourteen or so, I’m guessing.”

She hides her disgust at the lack of care shown by the matron. That was two or three years ago, not twenty. “And what were their names?”

“Well, there was Thomas Bentley, the turtle, and Murray, the hippopotamus. Murray only had the one name when he came to us. They were friends before Sly got dropped on my doorstep, probably because Thomas spoke English and Murray didn’t know any French at all.” Madeleine shrugs. “Whatever the case, Sly knew both, just like Thomas. It was like their secret code. They were all three too clever for their own good, though you wouldn’t be able to tell; next to Thomas most adults look like gibbering idiots, so even clever children seem stupid.”

At this, Carmelita  _ is  _ surprised. “But Cooper was their leader?”

“Murray didn’t speak well and Thomas was far too intelligent to connect with other children their age,” says the goat. “Sly knew how and when to play dumb and he was by far the least threatening on the outside. It was really the natural order of things.”

“I see.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of records, Inspector Fox. They...they’ve gone missing. Our hard copies  _ and  _ our digital ones.”

Definitely working with a hacker.

“Thank you, Madeleine. I appreciate your candor,” Carmelita lies, and takes her leave. 

Since she’s been officially assigned the Cooper case, her paper file has grown, and she thinks she’s got a solid understanding of the situation...but he’s seventeen now, and time is running out. She’s got less than a year to find him and convince him to stop. If she fails, he won’t just be little Ringtail. He’ll be Sly Cooper, and she’ll have to hunt him down for real.

**Author's Note:**

> A note: this takes place in 2000 C.E. Puerto Rico in 2000 C.E. was not utterly ravaged by a hurricane. I have nothing but love in my heart for the beautiful little island and its people, though I will admit my memory may be idealized and yes, that Castilian snobbery is totally a thing.


End file.
